Every day, I see media reports about rising beef prices....
From my limited perspective (don't buy much beef, only order it when MSing)
I feel as if prices have been sharply higher since COVID.

Is anyone noticing this at the grocery store?

In my 2 most recent trips to FG and TXRH in recent months, prices seem higher, but not recently higher, just higher since COVID.

If prices rise, reimbursements will have to and that's a downward spiral.

Yes, I am seeing it at the grocery store. I have Kroger receipts that show the sale price on chuck roast one year ago was $4.99/pound. It's a big deal now when it's under $7. That has nothing to do with COVID. I have never been a weekly beef consumer but I find myself cutting back even more because I cannot accept the rate of increase.

Price rise because of the devalue of the money due to the the money printer go blur during covid era. In short, money got overprinted to get a temporary fix, and result in a devalue of money, which reflect as inflation of product pricing.

You think the "so call" stimulus checks are free? Now you just get hit with the reality. That's what you get for drinking the Democrat koolaid and think that everything is free and somehow it just showup from thin air.

Basic economy 101

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 10/02/2025 05:51PM by kisekinecro.

All I asked was whether anyone is seeing a rise in beef prices LOL.

Guess you aren't.

When regular 80/20 ground beef goes on sale for more than I've ever paid for prime rib, I would say that the price of beef has gone up, and not just a little bit.

This is not a political message but I have heard that for beef in particular the pure number of heads of cattle in this country has been dropping for many years. Less beef available means higher prices just using that one metric. But add in that it is costing ranchers more to keep and feed each animal in their herd so many are cutting back and just selling some of the cattle and not replacing them as they would have bred them in the past because they can get more money selling now than raising another cow. I know nothing about cattle raising but some of the rise in beef prices has to do with supply and demand.

I have copied and pasted this from the USDA website. Most of the website has been taken down today but it still has this chart. IF you look at the column that starts iwth 94.4 million in 2004 that shows the number of million heads of cattle in US for the year. In 2004 it was 94.4 million heads of cattle and in 2024 after years of fluctuation it was 87.2 million heads of cattle in the US. The columns after that are for heads of cattle in Canada and Mexico.


Calendar year Total slaughter, United States (million head) Total slaughter, Canada (million head) Total slaughter, Mexico (million head) All cattle and calves inventory, United States* (million head) All cattle and calves inventory, Canada* (million head) All cattle and calves inventory, Mexico* (million head)
2004 33.8 4.5 6.8 94.4 14.6 25.2
2005 33.3 4.4 6.2 95.0 14.9 24.3
2006 34.6 4.0 5.5 96.3 14.7 23.7
2007 35.2 3.8 5.7 96.6 14.1 23.3
2008 35.5 3.8 5.8 96.0 13.8 22.9
2009 34.5 3.7 5.9 94.7 13.0 22.7
2010 35.3 3.7 6.1 94.1 12.7 22.2
2011 35.1 3.4 6.3 92.9 12.2 21.5
2012 33.9 3.1 6.4 91.2 12.2 20.1
2013 33.4 3.1 6.2 90.1 12.2 18.5
2014 30.9 3.2 6.0 88.2 12.1 17.8
2015 29.3 2.9 6.0 89.2 11.6 17.1
2016 31.2 3.1 6.0 91.9 11.6 16.6
2017 32.8 3.3 6.1 93.6 11.5 16.5
2018 33.7 3.5 6.2 94.3 11.7 16.6
2019 34.3 3.6 6.3 94.7 11.7 16.7
2020 33.4 3.5 6.3 93.8 11.5 16.9
2021 34.4 3.7 6.7 93.6 11.5 17.0
2022 34.8 3.7 6.8 91.8 11.5 17.3
2023 33.3 3.6 6.9 88.8 11.2 17.8
2024 32.2 3.4 7.1 87.2 11.0 17.8
* = Inventory on January 1.

Beef prices are definitely up. I used to buy 3-4 pounds of beef per month. Now I buy ground beef when I am out in the boonies every seven or eight weeks where there is a butcher with all North Carolina grown beef which has been vacuum sealed by the pound, and occasionally I will also pick up a single steak to cook for myself for dinner the next night.

I get my beef fix from doing steakhouse mystery shops every 2-3 weeks, and from occasionally getting a fast food burger when I'm out.

DUH! It's supply and demand. Shocking that ECON 101 still holds true (sarcasm)

Well, except in socialist / communist societies. We get to see that up close if one of the candidates wins NYC Mayoral election. If he does win, the Feds should erect a large fence around NYC and watch it just for fun like an ant farm. Remember having an ant farm as a kid?

Shite yes! Prices have risen, not dropped since January.

Somebody needs to start growing bison, emu, rabbit, llama and guinea pig. We are so limited here.

The people of this country are so trigger happy and so ready to pounce, that every question is seen as having a political angle. How sad is that. A country of people wound tighter than an 8 day clock.

It was a simple question also related to MSing that got moved here.
Are you seeing rising beef prices in your personal shopping and do you see this bleeding over to MSing?

As for politics, the leadership doesn't have to fight the people, they just have to convince the pitchfork people that the torch people want to take away their pitchforks.

@BarefootBliss wrote:

The people of this country are so trigger happy and so ready to pounce, that every question is seen as having a political angle. How sad is that. A country of people wound tighter than an 8 day clock.

It was a simple question also related to MSing that got moved here.
Are you seeing rising beef prices in your personal shopping and do you see this bleeding over to MSing?

As for politics, the leadership doesn't have to fight the people, they just have to convince the pitchfork people that the torch people want to take away their pitchforks.

Well, thd Kroger visits had the reimbursement raised by $1 a while back. So, a ~10% increase after quite a long time at the same rate. Does that cover the actual increase? I don't feel like it does.

The postal shops don't reimburse the required shipment in full unless you are mailing a short distance. I've mentioned that to them countless times, no adjustments.

Honestly, I don't see any MSC actively increasing pay to reflect rising prices. In general, they have maintained the same rate through the increases in gas, surging vehicle prices, etc. Their attitude is if you don't like it, don't do it, someone else will. And apparently someone will.

I dropped a pizza delivery shop after discovering the buying requirements (hidden until after accepting) were far beyond the budget. I asked for the reimbursement to be adjusted to match the cost before dropping and their view was "it's a discount" even though the buying requirements were specific, I wasn't able to select the things I might choose to purchase. I said no and someone else accepted that.

You can be mad at the people accepting a discount on pizza delivery because they don't help you force the change to reimbursement covering costs. But, I view it as a sign folks are struggling with feeding their family and treating the kids to pizza is worth the trouble to them for "a discount".

@sestrahelena wrote:

Somebody needs to start growing bison, emu, rabbit, llama and guinea pig. We are so limited here.

Can't. for one. Rabbit does not provide enough protein and nitration for the amount of meat that they have surprisingly. and secondly, you have many left wing environmentalist blocking preventing business from doing these type of business because "These animals emit CO2" that is destroying the earth.

And lastly, the cuttle count is dropping due to the weather change, such as drought, which is also a factor.

@sestrahelena wrote:

Somebody needs to start growing bison, emu, rabbit, llama and guinea pig. We are so limited here.

I saw goat meat in BJs the other day. Insect protein is an emerging market but they are likely to have more success with pet food than human due to deeply held bias. And there are small time, local sources of things like rabbit meat and venison if you look. Heck, I saw a news blip about a town with so many deer, they are allowing backyard hunting in city limits with certain stipulations to try and prevent accidentally shooting the neighbors.

@Deedeezthoughts wrote:

@sestrahelena wrote:

Somebody needs to start growing bison, emu, rabbit, llama and guinea pig. We are so limited here.

I saw goat meat in BJs the other day. Insect protein is an emerging market but they are likely to have more success with pet food than human due to deeply held bias. And there are small time, local sources of things like rabbit meat and venison if you look. Heck, I saw a news blip about a town with so many deer, they are allowing backyard hunting in city limits with certain stipulations to try and prevent accidentally shooting the neighbors.

Deep fried Insert is widely popular in Asia, and even in western country we have been consuming them one way or another. Many of the food coloring are extraction of some kind of insect. The protein addictive from make ups are factory grown roaches, etc....there's even a push trying to do Roach milk for a while now, but ya.....I do not foresee consuming that willingly anytime soon

@kisekinecro wrote:

@Deedeezthoughts wrote:

@sestrahelena wrote:

....there's even a push trying to do Roach milk for a while now, but ya.....I do not foresee consuming that willingly anytime soon

I can't let this "roach milk" idea pass without comment about the appropriation of the word "milk." Roaches do not produce milk. Neither do oats, almonds, rice, hemp, soy, or anything other than a female mammal. These products should be called "highly processed white goo" which is what they are. Okay. I'll go back to sleep now.

Milk of magnesia isn't milk either.

Yes, beef has gone up where I shop.
It went up, I started buying less often. I know many buy it less often. There are fewer cattle. Not sure which happened first, but we're well used to mostly eating chicken and pork.

I read an article the other day where Walmart has opened their own meat processing facilities in Kansas not too long ago to help bring down the high cost of meat. So, hopefully the prices will start going down.

Guinea pig meat?
Now we’re really going down the rabbit hole. ;-)

Once upon a time my dad raised emu, but he was stupid, he didn't have any processors or customers, just emu. He started selling babies to folks that wanted emu, and he started eating emu, because otherwise he would have had to feed them. He didn't even know any oil extractors. Unfortunately he passed and his wife and son sold all of the emu without ever offering any to me.

Later on, by only a little over a year, we started feeding raw to the dogs. And suddenly I really needed a variety of meats and I had the money to explore various options and "exotic" meats. I found a guy down near Sandy Eggo that raised emu for the oil, he sold the oil and made a great living at it, and he sold me the meat for remarkably good prices for a long time. But then he found a dog food company that wanted his emu meat and they wanted to pay more than me, after that all he would sell me is leg bones and wings, so my dogs are missing out.

My dogs have had Venison, Beef, pork, rabbit, every kind of fish (there was a hispanic grocery store in Riverside that used to sell carp for almost nothing and the dogs loved it), emu, ostrich, bison, goat, and lamb. There is probably more, but my memory kinda sucks.

I thought that once I moved here I might be able to add Nutria to the variety, but I've never found anyone that bothers to catch or kill them. And my dogs could seriously use some variety these days.

Folks in AZ used to buy my ex's pigeons to eat, and we used to know folks that raised guinea pigs for food too. My mother raised rabbits for food when we were kids, and she was married to a guy that hunted for a long time, so we got wild boar and venison often enough.

There are alternatives, but commercially produced beef, pork, and chicken are more cost effective and easier to get.

There is a chain of food stores that started popping up in the LA area a couple of years ago called Wild Fork. It seems that every few months I drive past a new location so they seem to be expanding. According to their signs out front they sell all sorts of "exotic" meats inside. Just checked their website and they seem to have ground Kangaroo, Alligator steaks, Elk and Bison , Venison, Ostrich, Quail , Rabbit and the regular meats sold at most stores. Not sure if they are in other cities as well. so someday these may be a lot easier to find.

@prince wrote:

Milk of magnesia isn't milk either.

Yes, beef has gone up where I shop.
It went up, I started buying less often. I know many buy it less often. There are fewer cattle. Not sure which happened first, but we're well used to mostly eating chicken and pork.

Some folks prefer the 2% MoM, just sayin'... ROFL!

This kept me engaged. I have questions, though. What kind of dogs do you have that eat all those different kinds of meat? (Mine will only eat chicken and sometimes beef.) What is emu oil used for?

@Morledzep wrote:

Once upon a time my dad raised emu, but he was stupid, he didn't have any processors or customers, just emu. He started selling babies to folks that wanted emu, and he started eating emu, because otherwise he would have had to feed them. He didn't even know any oil extractors. Unfortunately he passed and his wife and son sold all of the emu without ever offering any to me.

Later on, by only a little over a year, we started feeding raw to the dogs. And suddenly I really needed a variety of meats and I had the money to explore various options and "exotic" meats. I found a guy down near Sandy Eggo that raised emu for the oil, he sold the oil and made a great living at it, and he sold me the meat for remarkably good prices for a long time. But then he found a dog food company that wanted his emu meat and they wanted to pay more than me, after that all he would sell me is leg bones and wings, so my dogs are missing out.

My dogs have had Venison, Beef, pork, rabbit, every kind of fish (there was a hispanic grocery store in Riverside that used to sell carp for almost nothing and the dogs loved it), emu, ostrich, bison, goat, and lamb. There is probably more, but my memory kinda sucks.

I thought that once I moved here I might be able to add Nutria to the variety, but I've never found anyone that bothers to catch or kill them. And my dogs could seriously use some variety these days.

Folks in AZ used to buy my ex's pigeons to eat, and we used to know folks that raised guinea pigs for food too. My mother raised rabbits for food when we were kids, and she was married to a guy that hunted for a long time, so we got wild boar and venison often enough.

There are alternatives, but commercially produced beef, pork, and chicken are more cost effective and easier to get.

Ark,

In those 25 years I've lived with 3 different wolfdogs, 4 akitas, 5 pit bulls, a couple collies, a collie mutt, a golden, an American Bulldog, a toy poodle mutt, a schipperke mutt, an anatolian shepherd, and some funny looking hound/pit bull mixes. Not to mention the fosters that went on with their rescues when they were done with me. I don't allow "dog food" in my house.

Emu oil is used for soothing skin problems, it can also be taken internally to help with joint pain. My ex had really bad psoriasis, that the emu oil helped heal, He soaked in a warm bath, softened all of the scabs and placs and pulled them off, then he rubbed all of the sores with emu oil twice per day, and it healed all of the sores in just a couple weeks. We drizzled a little on the meat we fed the older dogs who had arthritis and it seemed to help them be more active and more comfortable.

Right now I could use a bottle, I have an idiot puppy that is tearing his back open on wire in his crate. I also need to buy him a new crate.

Too bad shop-et-all has taken a break. I’m sure she (forgive me if I’m wrong) would be able to contribute to the topic of exotic meats. I have a weak stomach so I will bow out. I personally stick with boeuf bourguignon.

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 10/08/2025 05:34PM by Minime.